A conference has been scheduled for 8:45 am on June 6. It’s called a “Case Management” conference and was filed for by one of the Tolkien Trust’s attorneys. James Peterson (of Godfrey and Kahn here in Madison), who has been keeping me up to date on the lawsuit and explaining the legal implications to me, tells me that such a conference could be held for a wide variety of reasons. His guess is that either the plaintiffs want to ask the judge to set a schedule to get the case moving or there is some information about a settlement to discuss with him.

As I reported here on April 21, both sides had agreed to a 30-day extension of New Line’s deadline to file a response to the Trust’s original complaint. That new deadline is tomorrow, May 14. Part of the explanation for the rationale behind the request for an extension was this:

Whereas, the parties are not submitting this request for any dilatory or improper purpose. Rather, the parties have engaged in discussions relating to a potential resolution of this matter; in conjunction with these discussions, Defendants have agreed to provide certain documents to Plaintiffs in connection with Plaintiffs’ audits of the motion pictures at issue in this matter, and the parties are in the process of discussing the logistics of this process;

My hope, of course, is that those discussions have continued and that the upcoming conference means that a settlement is within sight. The fact that New Line and MGM have officially signed Guillermo Del Toro to direct The Hobbit would seem to hint as much. Maybe we’ll hear some good news in a few weeks!

(If you’ve somehow missed all the news about this lawsuit, I’ve also got a long entry on it here.)